Samsung updates South Korean Galaxy S with “Value Pack”

Say, Galaxy S owners, you don’t want Ice Cream Sandwich, do you? No, that great performance and all those posh new features are for snobs who buy more than one phone every two years. Surely you’ll be more than satisfied with a few ICS imitation features added to reliable old TouchWiz via a “Value Pack“. Sarcasm aside, that’s the attitude that Samsung seems to be adopting with its add-on Value Pack for Gingerbread. The first country to get the update for the Galaxy S is Sammy’s home state of South Korea.

The additions do their best to emulate some of the more forward-facing features in Android 4.0, such as face unlock, a tweaked Launcher app and the ability to take photos while recording video. If (for some reason) owners are still using Android 2.1 or 2.2, they’ll need to upgrade to 2.3 before getting the update. The software is installed via Samsung’s Kies desktop application, not over-the-air. While the international (i9000) model of the Galaxy S should see updates for English and other languages, who knows if any of the four American variants of the Galaxy S will be updated. Considering carriers’ general attitudes towards “out of date” hardware, it seems unlikely.

Modders and custom ROM enthusiasts have been running honest-to-goodness Ice Cream Sandwich on their Galaxy S phones almost since it was released, and why not, since the hardware is almost identical to the Nexus S. With the Galaxy S II’s Ice Cream Sandwich out in the wild, it shouldn’t be too long before someone clever ports the updated TouchWiz back to the original. Even so, the lack of a real update leaves a sour taste in the mouths of those without the means or the inclination to modify their phones.